


La Belle Dame

by RobberBaroness



Series: Darkest Timeline [12]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22314217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: Two villains, obsessed with the same woman.
Relationships: Guinevere/Lancelot du Lac, Guinevere/Mordred (Arthurian)
Series: Darkest Timeline [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1598476
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	La Belle Dame

“Does Mordred have a spiritual presence who hounds his every move?” Lancelot asked Galahad idly. “If I deserve you, surely he does as well.”

“I wouldn’t know. If he does, it’s probably Uther Pendragon- from all the times I tried to befriend Mordred, I gathered he idolized his grandfather. But I came down from heaven to either guilt you until you repented or torment you until you died. Which will it be?”

Lancelot sighed.

“How should I know? You tell me if I can be redeemed. You were the one who found favor with those on high.”

“Sometimes I wonder.”

Lancelot looked at his son in surprise.

“I wonder if the grail quest was a test of hubris, and if I failed it. I gave up everything- my family, my true love, my own life- in the belief that I would somehow be redeeming the world. And what has happened? Have things on earth gotten any better? Did the grail cure anyone besides the Fisher King? Was it even the grail that did it or simply Percival’s everyday human kindness in asking what ailed him? If I wanted to improve the spiritual wellfare of the land, should I have done as he did, and devoted my life to simple and humble piety rather than grand quests?”

Galahad shook his head.

“I don’t know. It might surprise you to hear me say it, but I’m not perfect.” He smiled wryly. “I once sat in the wrong chair.”

If Lancelot wanted to seek redemption, he didn’t even know where to start. Any remaining Knights of the Round Table would not accept his surrender any more than Kay had. He could end his own life, as Galahad had once suggested, but it was hard to imagine that one mortal sin would truly redeem another. He could find Guinevere and ask for absolvement, but he knew in his heart that she would never give it to him. He could become another Percival and spend the rest of his life as a hermit, but a lifetime of dreaming about Guinevere without ever beholding her face again was too much to contemplate.

Tristram returned from gathering firewood, and against his better judgement, Lancelot looked to him for guidance.

“I saw her, Tristram,” Lancelot said. “I saw Guinevere, and I lost her. I wanted to beg her forgiveness when I reached for her, but there was another impulse in me- to grab her, to have her right there on the forest floor, and to take her away with me.” He could say anything he wanted, fairly secure in the fact that Tristram was only half paying attention, and there was something liberating about this. “I can swear to change all I want, but if I saw her again, could I restrain myself?”

Tristram laughed in what he clearly thought was a reassuring fashion.

“Of course you couldn’t! You’re in love! A man in love cannot restrain himself by his very nature, not if the love is true. Isolde and I risk death and damnation whenever we are together, but we cannot contain what we feel. I’ve been a beggar, a leper, a wandering minstrel, this and a thousand other dishonorable disguises, all for the sake of love.”

“But you would never hurt Isolde, surely. You would die before doing such a thing.”

“Isolde and I hurt each other all the time! Love is pain, my friend. Love is agony. Love is the sweetest of sorrows, the cruelest of pleasures.”

Lancelot looked to Galahad. The angel shrugged, apparently having nothing to add to that.

***

“Holed up in Morgan’s castle?”

“So our spies say, my liege, though whether Guinevere has reached it yet, I cannot say.”

And there ended all Mordred’s plans for retrieving his queen. If Morgan had been his ally- but no, that door was locked to him now. He’d never breach that castle, not if Arthur’s forces had failed to do so. For the hundredth time, he cursed himself as a child for discarding the study of magic for that of the sword. Any man could hire an armed escort- only the rarest sorcerer could force his way inside a warded building.

Nevertheless, despite his limited talents, he knew that Camelot’s library contained books of magic existing nowhere else in the world. Some had been written by Merlin, some were said to be even older than the man himself. Morgan would not be expecting him to take her castle by trickery; she’d never placed any faith in his skills as a mage. Well, she would be proven wrong.

Mordred’s knights tried to speak to him about reports of the remaining loyalist forces banding together, but he largely ignored them. What was the point of being king without Guinevere? What was the point of being king if you could not simply take what you wanted?

Mordred spent the entire evening locked in the library with anything even vaguely resembling a grimoire. Most were clear fakes, enlivened with gruesome details about boiling cats to death in order to seem like genuine dark magic. He had almost lost hope entirely when he came across a spell in a small, unassuming book that looked like it had been repeatedly corrected with successive tries. That was a good sign, at the very least.

He smiled as he read the description of the spell’s effects.

He was no Morgan, and certainly no Merlin. The spell was beyond anything he’d ever cast in complexity- for Mordred, magic had always been a child’s past time, a few tricks here and there, never a vocation. But simply reading the words on the page, as few of them as he understood, filled his mind with ideas. If he could maintain the spell he could do anything he wanted, anything in the world. And if he could not maintain the spell for long enough? In its own way, so much the better to have Guinevere within his arms as her face turned to one of horror and betrayal, finally realizing who and what he was, and that there was no way she could run from him.

“At times like this,” Mordred said with a light air, “I should always stop to ask- what would Grandfather Uther do?”


End file.
